


Precious

by NuMo



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Friendship, Gen, No Dialogue, hopelessly romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sappy, unabashed, peaceful, torrential outpouring - completely beyond help. Sometimes, you gotta be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precious

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by a conversation, and has a soundtrack. 
> 
> The conversation happens between two women in the wonderful book "The Mad Ship" by Robin Hobb, and is quoted in part [here](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/343900-why-can-t-people-love-one-another-and-still-remain-free). That is the part that reverberates in here.
> 
> This work's soundtrack is the equally sappy and unabashed rendition of "She" by Elvis Costello, as it appears on the Notting Hill soundtrack. For the lyrics, go [here](http://www.lyricsfreak.com/e/elvis+costello/she_10100904.html), for example. 
> 
> Don't say I didn't warn you.

We harmonized from the beginning, and by now it feels like I can read her mind, and she mine. Sometimes she knows my mind before I have made it up; sometimes it is the other way around. We truly do not need words to understand each other. That in itself is precious and rare. More precious still is the fact that we both of us are aware of this. 

There are so many things either of us can be for the other. There are some things neither of us can be for the other. 

There are so many things either of us wants and needs the other to be. There are some things neither of us will permit the other to be, right now. 

The one thing I have learned in my years at her side is that everything I can be for her, I will be. She knows it, and I can see it give her some of the strength she needs. Far more of that strength comes from within her, that is true, but no one’s strength, not even hers, suffices for all that life throws at you. So at times, when she looks at me, or touches me, it is not to give me strength, but to be strengthened by me. By us. Just as I built a home for her, a tub, an imaginary boat, I will build a stronghold for her then. 

We are different, she and I, in more ways than we share traits. But the differences between us complement what we are, like stone and sling, seed and soil, wind and feather – each a completeness in its own right, but more than their sum when coming together. She follows her own guiding star. I follow her. I fare far better following a person than a principle. Her, I would follow to the ends of the universe and back. As confidant, support, counsel. As friend. 

The situation we find ourselves in does not allow for the role I have longed for for so long, but I have laid that desire to rest. It did my spirit good to put it aside. It did not diminish me to do it, though it cost me: conscious effort, steadfast will, a few cherished notions of myself. But there is no more longing, now that I have found and accepted this truth. It binds me to her even more assuredly, and yet there is freedom in it, and peace. I know she is not quite there yet, but then she has always been prone to deny herself peace and freedom. She is bound by duty. I am bound by an oath a character of mine took in a tale I wove her. 

Within that oath, my desire sleeps; and, spirits willing, if the situation changes, it will awake again. Until then I am the wind beneath her wings. I am content to be. It gives me joy to see her fly, more joy than if I flew my own way. More often than not I fly right alongside her, and if she has to fly off on her own, I know she will return to me in the end, and that is the most precious of truths I have ever found. It is worth everything. Every moment of fear, or loneliness, of hurt. 

Everything.


End file.
